About an hour later, as I was sliding some chicken breasts into the oven, my mother called.

“Macy,” she said, “I need you to get me a phone number.”

“Okay,” I said, starting toward her office. “Let me just get your phone book.”

“No, I think you know it. It’s for that woman, Delia. The woman you worked for.”

“Delia?” I said.

“Yes.”

I just stood there for a second, waiting for her to offer an explanation. When she didn’t, I said, “Why . . .?”

“Because,” she said, “Rathka has just quit, and every other catering company is already booked for next Saturday or on vacation. This is a last resort.”

“Rathka quit?” I asked, incredulous.

“Macy,” she said. “The number, please.”

I knew there was no way Delia would do it: she hadn’t booked any jobs since Avery had been born, and it was way short notice. But with the way my mother’s day had been going, I figured it was better not to point this out. “It’s 555-7823,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be home soon.” And then there was a click, and she was gone.

Chapter Nineteen

My sister stayed away for a full week, completely and totally incommunicado. She stopped answering her cell phone and ignored all emails, and when we finally got through on her home phone, it was always Wally who answered, his voice stiff and forced enough that it was immediately clear not only that he had been coached to say she was out but that she was standing right there behind him as he did so.

“She’ll get over it,” my mother kept saying, each time I relayed my thwarted efforts to reach her. “She will.”

My mother wasn’t worried, even if I was. There were other, bigger concerns on her mind now. And they all had to do with the gala reception.

It had started with Rathka quitting, but that was only the beginning. In the six days since, it seemed like everything that could go wrong had done just that. When the landscapers came to work on the yard, one of their riding mowers went haywire, ripping up huge clumps of grass and taking out a few shrubs in the process. They did their best to fix it, but the topography remained uneven. Just crossing from the garage to the steps felt like walking over little mountains and valleys. Half of the invitations we’d mailed came back due to some postal error, which meant I had to drive around one hot afternoon, hand delivering them to mailbox after mailbox. The next day, the string quartet cancelled, as three of the four had come down with food poisoning at an outdoor wedding.

The night before the party, however, my mother’s luck seemed to be changing. The guys from the party rental place arrived early to assemble the tent. We stood and watched as they put it up and set up the chairs and tables beneath it, both of us braced for some sort of crisis. But everything went according to plan.

“Wonderful,” she said to the tent guy, handing him his check. “I wasn’t even sure we’d need a tent, but it just makes everything look that much nicer.”

“And also,” he told her, “if it rains, you’re covered.”

She just looked at him. “It is not,” she said, firmly, as if there was no room for negotiation, “going to rain.”

The only other good news my mother had gotten was that Delia, to my surprise, had agreed to take the gala job. It wouldn’t be lamb on fine china, my mother had sighed, but she’d be glad for anything at this point, even if it was chicken on a stick and meatballs.

“Everyone loves meatballs,” I’d told her, but she’d just looked at me before moving on to the next crisis at hand.

In a way, I was kind of grateful for all the various crises, if only because they kept me so busy. I didn’t have time to worry about things, such as the awkwardness of seeing Wes after all this time, or handling Jason, who was now planning to drop by to say hello at some point during the evening. I’d just deal with it when it happened, I told myself, and that would be soon enough.

Now, as the tent guys drove off, I heard a car pull into the driveway. I glanced around the side of the house to see my sister getting out of a truck with a long, wide bed, which was packed with what I first assumed was metal patio furniture or some sort of construction refuse from the beach house. She parked and got out just as another car, which I recognized as belonging to one of my mother’s salesmen, pulled up behind her.

“What on earth has she got there?” my mother asked me as we walked around the side of the house, and suddenly I realized it was Wes’s stuff. Six pieces, at least, although they were stacked in such a way it was hard to tell. By the time we got up to the truck, Caroline had the tailgate down and she and the salesman were pulling a few pieces out, leaning them against the back bumper. I could see a big angel with a barbed-wire halo, as well as a whirligig that had been out at his house the last day I’d been there. It was made up of a series of bicycle wheels—from big ones to the tiny training kind—welded to a twisted piece of rebar.

“Caroline,” my mother called out, her voice forced and cheery. “Hello.”

Caroline didn’t reply at first, but the salesman waved as they continued pulling pieces out and putting them in the driveway: a smaller angel with a stained-glass halo, another whirligig fashioned out of hubcaps and interlocking gears.

“We can just set them up on the grass,” she said to the salesman. “Anywhere’s fine, really.”